Ofcom fines BBC £400,000

Updated 12.06 Wed Jul 30 2008

Keywords: television, competitions, radio, winners, Ofcom, regulator, BBC

The BBC has been fined £400,000 for faking winners and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly on TV and radio shows.

The fine is the highest financial penalty to be imposed by broadcasting regulator Ofcom for breach of its broadcasting code.

"Production teams had taken pre-mediated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning" - Ofcom

It covers a number of radio and television programmes including:

Comic Relief on March 16, 2007 (fined £45,000); Sport Relief on July 15, 2006 (£45,000); Children in Need, BBC1 (Scotland) on November 18, 2005 (£35,000); TMi on September 16, 2006 (£50,000); BBC 6 Music's Liz Kershaw Show on May 1, 2005 (£115,000); Radio 1's Jo Whiley Show between April 20-May 12, 2006 (£75,000); Russell Brand on BBC 6 Music on April 9, 2006 (£17,500) and the Clare McDonnell Show from September 2006 (£17,500).

In a statement, the regulator said: "Ofcom considered that these breaches of the Code were very serious. In each of these cases the BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly."

It said that in some cases, BBC production teams "had taken pre-mediated decisions to broadcast competitions and encourage listeners to enter in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of winning".

In other cases, programmes faced with technical problems, made up the names of winners, Ofcom said.

Overall, Ofcom found that the BBC failed to have adequate management oversight of its compliance and training procedures to ensure that the audience was not misled.

Although viewers and listeners paid the cost of their calls to take part in these competitions the BBC did not receive any money from the entries.